Guild Wars 2

I have been playing PvE since game launch and, until now, have avoided condition classes and builds for obvious reasons. However, with the new content, I figured on giving a ‘conditionmancer’ a go to help deal with husk spawns at the wurm event and the like.

Problem for me is, I have no clue on how to build for condition damage in PvE. All the build info I see here is for PvP /WvW, which is not what I am looking for. The only PvE advice I have seen says to use carrion armour with scavenger runes.

I can see carrion armour, but the runes?? 183 CD is fine, but the other rune options seem pretty useless. Why not runes of strength, or any runes that add and/or sustain might for more power and condition damage? I focus on might for all my DPS builds, and seems to work well enough.

What about weapons/sigils and trinkets?
Go with full carrion or mix in something else like rabid or dire? The trinket set from the temple of Dwayna look to be useful.

As for traits, I guess it will be something glassy like 30/xx/0/0/xx

My necro is currently lvl 77, and I should hit 80 in a day or two.
For leveling I have been using this:

axe/focus;
dagger/warhorn
Lots of death shroud

30/0/25/15/0
Healing: consume conditions
Utilities: 3 signets
Elite: plague

I avoid using minions because I find them very annoying …
Started with power/pre kit then swapped into carrion/rampager drops.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion/advice

bri.2359:

I can see carrion armour, but the runes?? 183 CD is fine, but the other rune options seem pretty useless. Why not runes of strength, or any runes that add and/or sustain might for more power and condition damage? I focus on might for all my DPS builds, and seems to work well enough.

It would work well enough if necros could sustain lots of might by themselves.
The only legitimate souce of might for a condition necro is Blood is Power. We also have traits like Reaper’s Might and Signet Mastery, but:
Life Blasting to build a few stacks of might fits in a hybrid DPS rotation, but if you go full conditions you’ll want to keep stacking bleeds instead.
Signet Mastery, simple fact is: the more signets you use in a condition build the lower your damage. Some people have Signet of Spite on their skill bar, but it’s really more of a PvP skill for cover conditions, in PvE you won’t get far with 2x bleeding and a little poison. And considering the long cooldown the might up-time isn’t that great.

Bottom line: people go with scavenging because it will give them the highest condition damage they can get. Is it really the highest DPS option as a condimancer? I’m not so sure, the occasional confusion proc from Perplexity (5x plus 1 crest/jewel) is likely to net more damage. But the extra healing on Scavenging makes it the superior defensive choice.

Ive been looking into optimal condimancer recently. If going for carrion armour with rabid trinkets and weapons. Would you go undead runes or still go for scavenging?

Edit: Seems with a mix of carrion and rabid. Scavenging is still better. Best combo i found was carrion weapons and armour with rabid trinkets. But if you want to gain 4% direct damage in exchange for 2% less condi damage then you should use rampager weapons.

spoj.9672:

Ive been looking into optimal condimancer recently…

That could be a rather tricky endeavour.
If you run a condition or hybrid build to contribute more to something like the wurm event with the husk mobs or whatever, so basically for aoe-bursting conditions, the lines get a lot more blurry than it would with your dagger build.
You have your set rotation for single target auto attacking, Locust Swarm and flashing DS for fury and weakness etc., so it’s rather easy to say: with setup X I’ll do ~5% more damage than setup Y.
But with a condition build, especially in group events, there are so many factors that can shift your dps in one or the other direction. Like positioning for aoe, transfers – especially Epidemic, other people buffing you, or stuff like: should I burst a single target and then spread conditions? Or start with a lot of aoe and let others stack as well before I double up condis? In which case, is it worth it to use Master of Corruption for more frequent aoe or not..?

So calculations like this:

spoj.9672:

But if you want to gain 4% direct damage in exchange for 2% less condi damage then you should use rampager weapons.

don’t matter as much as in direct damage builds.
Also, I might be bias here because I use a hybrid build, but I’d always rather go for the direct damage boost. Not just because of the much needed single target damage on event NPCs that get maxed condi caps after 2 seconds, but because conditions tick with a base value. So if I drop 2% condition damage I’m hardly losing that much actual damage. For example: 1470 instead of 1500 condi damage, that means one tick of bleeding does 116 instead of 117,5 damage. Even if you manage to spread 25 stacks with Epidemic, those extra 2% condi damage will still just be a little over 180 dps for the short while until the stacks run out. That’s about as good as a random Barbed Precision proc. So if I had the choice I’d definitely go for the extra direct damage instead.

Agreed. I was just going off what I think is right. But there are so many variables to consider. Its a nightmare.

I would also pick the rampager weapons personally. And I was more considering this for dungeons or small groups. In zergs its going to be demolished pretty quickly. The only time it would be ok is in husk defense squads on wurm. And for those I think more condition damage and more regular epidemics is better than some extra condition duration.

Ah, thanks for the input guys!

I ordered a full set of Ogden’s armour (carrion stats with runes of strength) on the TP. Scavenging runes are pretty cheap, so not a big deal to slot those over the runes of strength.

Wasn’t sure about weapons and trinkets, though.
I have a carrion legionnaires exotic axe and Final Rest in my bank I can give to my necro, but will need to place orders for the other carrion weapons.

Will need to run through Orr to open up Dwayna temple wp for the rabid trinkets…

Go for the most usefull stats if you are low on gold, don’t flesh out on one particular build with one particular purpose..

luckily you are a necro and we only have 2 or 3 proper builds in any pv~

Fortunately, gold is not a problem.
The problem is figuring out what to spend it on!

In my opinion, I think you avoid all those thing will help in PvE.
Such as conditions, minions, and so on.
I have compare the trait many times in my open world games. I think condition BD is the most stable build and MM should be the most relax build.
MM necro actually have the most higher DPS to single target in open world fighting. Even you can easily beat some champs (except some kinds like toxic spider queen omg) without any danger and just sit there watch your minions to rip it, just summon again when they die. Nothing can beat your minions in open world.(May the water zone will kill your flesh XD)

But the AI is the seriously problem. Sad

For your build, I can not say it is bad, but axe/dagger and all of your slots are signet, I think you might meet a big trouble with foes. You need a stable AOE, just bring suffering, the wells can help you a lot if you use a power build. And wells with Blood Magic 30 points can actually provide a crazy sustain, More foes, more sustain, just standing there and kill 5-6 foes very easily.

My suggestion is, if you want to maximize you effect in PvE. Just go 30/30/0/0/10, with Scepter/Dagger + Dagger(Axe)/Focus. Crazy single DPS, and stable AOE DPS.

But this build might disappear soon. So sad

Scyllalice, thanks for the input.

Yes, the build I used while leveling is not the same build I will use at lvl 80. In fact, I just hit 80 last evening, so will respecc my traits. 30/30/0/010 is what I am looking at.

I currently have a full set of carrion armour with scavenger runes, and 2 rabid accessories, with a buy order on a rabid amulet. Will need to run down to Dwayna temple for the rabid rings and backpiece. The rabid rings on the TP are just too expensive right now.

I still need to place buy orders for rampager weapons and decide on sigils…

You dont have any pristine relics for ascended rings?

For sigils I would recommend scepter with either sigil of bursting. For offhand dagger you might want to get 2 and have 1 with condi duration or sigil of earth and then have the other with an energy sigil for more difficult content. Staff can have bursting or energy sigil.

Also if you are going to stack corruption. Then get another scepter and dagger so you can double stack and get those max corruption stacks with only 13 mobs then switch to your regular set.

From my experience condition damage in PvE has 2 major problems, one is ramp up time and the second is maintaining 25 stacks of bleed. This is the build I’ve found that best addresses both of those issues: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAr4YjMap7Fbub87JkpCZD0jeBXAxoHEjxkMA-jwBBohC0UAhm+AIFtIasVTFRjVdDTHjIqWKAYWWB-e

I gotta ask though, why conditions for open world zerg content? Is it a specific mechanic for the wurm fight? Condi damage is usually a poor choice for zerg content.

I’m pretty sure my set up is not optimal but I did a little experimenting with this. Using cheap exotics via WvW badges, Karma and cheap runes, I put together a set that was a mix of Rampager / Zerker, about 60%-70% rampager, rest zerker. I used runes of the undead because they are super cheap.

Trait wise, went 30 30 0 0 10.

Consumables: Sharpenign stone and +condi duration food (the 36% one, again, cheap)

I have done the following extensively on this:

Mid level fractals (20s, low 30s), SE p1 p3, COF p1 p2, TA forward and up

On these the build performed extremely well when no other condi build was present in the group. It allowed for quicker/better AOE of trash spawns, etc. MUCH quicker. On bosses it was semi usefull. the ticking condis offset disengage times when party dodges out so it kinda evened out.

Now, when another condi build was present, regardless what class, be it a thief or whatever, thats when things would start to drastically slow down due to the 25 stacks of bleed limit and the maximum 5k DPS condi hard cap on bosses.

So effectiveness of PvE condi build is largely dependant on rest of your team because it determines how quick you hit the condi dmg caps via stack number and the 5k DPS limit.

If you wanna try out various builds, go for the cheap stuff like I did and see if they perform for you. if you end up liking it a lot, then gear it out nicely later.

Sartori.6758:

I gotta ask though, why conditions for open world zerg content? Is it a specific mechanic for the wurm fight? Condi damage is usually a poor choice for zerg content.

Yup the champ husks that spawn during the wurm fights have a heavy buff against direct damage, blocking around 90%. Condition damage is he only method to take them down quickly.

One of the most important tactics for this event is to have 3 parties of 5 heavy condition builds assigned to each wurm group. This is all the they do, chase and kill off the husk spawns, and a party of 5 condition necros can do this very well.

In fact my necro was in a successful wurm event over the weekend,so I know this works.

Over the weekend my necro was part of a successful wurm event.

I was in a party of 5 heavy condition damage builds, 4 necros and a ranger, assigned to the Crimson wurm and our mission was to take out the champ husks.

I used this:
30/30/0/0/10
V, VII, XI
II, VII, XI
V

Armour: full carrion with scavenger runes (all exotic)
Trinkets: full rabid with crests of the rabid (all exotic)
Weapon set 1: Scepter (sigil of bursting) / dagger (sigil of corruption) (all exotic)
Weapon set 2: Staff (sigil of blood) (exotic)
Buffs: Master tuning crystals / rare veggie pizza

Utilities:
Consume Conditions
Blood is Power
Corrosive Poison Cloud
Epidemic
Plague

With death shroud, this seemed to work very well on the champ husks.